


Two Years Three Months Later

by winteringinrome



Category: Normal People (TV 2020), Normal People - Sally Rooney
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Happy Ending, Post-Canon, Reunions, Sally Rooney, Writing this was an Act of Self-Care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:20:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24311185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winteringinrome/pseuds/winteringinrome
Summary: It’s been two years and three months and the sight of Marianne across a crowded room is still enough to stop him in his tracks.As an act of lockdown self-care I wrote a hopeful coda to Normal People. It is set two years after Connell leaves for New York.
Relationships: Connell Waldron/Marianne Sheridan, Marianne Sheridan/Connell Waldron
Comments: 75
Kudos: 400





	1. Chapter 1

He didn’t want to do it, had tried desperately to get out of it, the thought of it is equal parts repellant and terrifying to him.

Is there any point to those things, he'd said, really? I think people will be put off by me honestly.

But his publicist had insisted.

Your readers want to hear it in your voice, Connell, she’d said, the authentic voice. You’ll be amazing, they’ll love you.

And so here he is, in an East Village bookshop, in a shirt that feels too tight around the collar and damp under the arms from nerves, his newly published novel clutched in his sweaty grip.

The bookshop is surprisingly full, maybe thirty people or so crammed in. Some are friends from grad school, others he recognises from the nebulous downtown literary ‘scene’, faces familiar from poetry readings and public library lectures and the cheap rows of the theatre. The rest, Connell allows himself to consider as he takes his seat in front of them, perhaps came with no other motive than to hear him read. It makes the pulse jump franticly at his temple.

Please join me in welcoming our author Connell Waldron for tonight’s reading, the event host says. Connell grew up in a small town in Ireland and moved to the US to complete his MFA in creative writing here in New York City. His debut novel, the result of that MFA, is a careful exploration of the value of mistakes and the lessons that can be learnt from them, as well as a raw and intimate look at a young man’s experience of moving to a new country. Connell cites O’Hara, Adichie and McCourt as influences and this work marks him out as a new voice in the canon of confessional Irish emigre authors. Connell–

There is nothing to say about the reading aloud portion of the evening, other than it passes swiftly and without a single conscious thought from Connell himself. He is purely a blank mind and a mechanical impulse to turn the pages and to open and shut his mouth.

He comes to to the sound of polite applause, his mouth dry and hands shaky. The host thanks him and says some nice things about the chapter and then opens the floor up for questions. Did he draw on his own experiences of coming to America? Yes. Did he view this as an overtly political work? No. How did he manage to get published straight out of college?

Do I look like I know? Connell wants to say, do I look like I have any idea what I’m doing here?

After half an hour more, he is released from the makeshift stage, set free to shake hands and make awkward small talk with his guests. Everyone is shockingly kind and he moves slightly cringingly from group to group. Thanks so much for coming, oh you liked it? Grand, thank you. Thanks so much.

He has nearly completed a full circuit of the room when he sees her. She is standing alone by the door, her coat folded neatly over her arm. It has been nearly two years since they have been in the same room and it takes Connell’s eyes a moment to adjust. He can almost feel their workings – the cones, the rods, the fascia of his retina – struggling to pull her into focus, unused to seeing her without the pixelated barrier of a poor Skype connection. When at last she appears, radiantly three-dimensional in the centre of his vision, he finds himself quite overwhelmed by the detail of her. He watches as she raises her eyebrows. Well, Marianne’s expression seems to say, here we are again.

He feels a pain in his cheeks and he realises suddenly that he’s smiling, his whole face contorted into this big, daft, beaming grin, which seems to burst from his chest upwards out through his teeth. He’s not sure whether she starts to walk toward him first or if he moves to her, but either way it is a few short steps before they are standing in front of each other and he is scooping her wordlessly up, her coat crushed between them, his face in her neck.

She is light in his arms and smells slightly synthetic, like airport lounges and plastic seats. It brings to mind, strangely, Rob’s funeral – January of 2015? 2014? God, a long time now – when he had seen Marianne across a crowded room and they had walked towards each other just like that and embraced without needing to speak. He has the same sense now of being rooted and grounded by the act of holding her, tethered somehow, although he had not been aware at all that he’d been drifting. 

After a moment he realises, just as he had done in St John the Evangelist in Carricklea, that they are attracting curious, sideways looks from those around them. He sets Marianne gently back on her feet and blinks down at her.

Hi, he says.

Hi.

I wasn’t sure you’d come.

Really?

He pauses to think and then laughs. No, not really, he says, I knew you’d come actually.

And he had. Although he hadn’t ever said it to her, hadn’t even let the thought form really, all the same it had sat within him solid and unacknowledged, the necessity of her arrival. He cannot imagine this moment without her. They are like two waves of sound, he has sometimes thought, rising and falling alongside one another, not synchronised and yet inevitably – repeatedly – fated to converge. For every peak in his life, he thinks, Marianne has been there.

She is smiling at him. You’re looking well Connell, New York suits you.

And yourself.

She laughs. I’ve only been here four hours.

Ah, you know what I mean. Did you just get in then?

Yes, left the airport and came straight over.

And were you here the whole time? The thought makes him feel vaguely hot behind the eyes

She nods. You’d only just started when I came in. I thought I’d stay at the back though, I didn’t want to, I don’t know, disrupt you.

You thought the sight of you would stop me in my tracks, did you?

She laughs again. Something like that.

Her hair is different, he notices, she wears the fringe all swept to one side and when she laughed just then it had fallen across her eye and now she is raising her hand to push it back. When it is tucked behind her ear again, Connell sees that her smile has slipped into something more earnest.

You were amazing tonight, Connell, she says. The book’s amazing.

Pleasure wells up like warmth in his chest and he ducks his head. Yeah?

Yeah, brilliant. She puts her hand on his arm. Really.

Thanks.

Your mum must be so proud.

He laughs. Yeah she’s fairly losing her mind alright.

Has she been over?

He nods. A few weeks back now, just before the book came out.

He had taken Lorraine out for dinner and it had been the most satisfying evening of his life. They hadn’t gone anywhere fancy, just an Italian near his apartment, but he had ordered a nice bottle of wine and a beer for himself, a starter and main each and then they had shared a dessert and he had paid for it all, with a good tip for the server and he hadn’t even minded that Lorraine wouldn’t stop smiling or getting weepy or telling him how happy he made her.

Marianne is smiling at him still and she gives his arm a little squeeze. It was nice hearing you read it just then, but it’s funny, when the book came out, and I read it in full for the first time, I heard it all in your voice anyway. It was so clear, right in my head as though you were reading over my shoulder. We got through it in one sitting, you and me. She shakes her head. The way you write people, Connell, it’s like you’re getting to the very core of them. It’s scary really, how insightful you are. I was a bit in awe of you when I finished.

He can feel himself reddening. Ah stop, he says, then, rubbing his jaw with the palm of his hand, Thanks, though. That’s nice, that’s nice of you to say that. He takes a breath. You know it’s important to me, what you think, so… 

He’s startled by a touch at his elbow and turns to find Cara at his side.

Sorry to interrupt, she says, but people are starting to leave. Are you okay if we wrap things up?

He looks past her, surprised to find that the room has indeed thinned out, the last few people now draining their glasses of free wine. It occurs to him briefly that he has been rude and that he should have asked Marianne to wait while he finished off thanking everyone. The thought doesn't trouble him much. He cannot conceive of a single version of this evening where that would have happened. 

Sorry, he says to Cara. Of course yeah, that’s fine. 

He turns back to Marianne who, he notices, has moved apart from him slightly and is re-folding her coat so that it lies in neat pleats again over her arm. 

You’re probably wrecked, are you? he says.

Her face, like her coat, has been smoothed and flattened. Yes, she says after a pause, I am a bit. 

Will we call it a night then?

Marianne makes a non-committal noise. Connell, conscious that Cara is still next to him looks awkwardly between them, then says, Cara, this is Marianne. She’s a friend from home.

Marianne smiles and extends a pale hand and leans in so that she can hear when Cara says it is nice to meet her and asks her whether she lives in New York too.

Connell watches them and all he can think of is that a moment ago Marianne had stood close to him and now she’s not, that her hip had been cocked to his and her hand had been on his arm and now it’s not. He feels the loss of them, high and sharp in the back of his throat. 

Cara is my publicist, he says loudly and to no one in particular. The two of them turn to him, startled. He thinks he interrupted Marianne, but it had felt important to say that, as soon as possible.

Oh, Marianne says and she sounds slightly amused.

After that no one seems to know quite what to do. They stand there smiling and nodding politely at each other until Cara eventually says she'll tell Ryan he can start closing up.

Sorry, Connell says when she’s gone, I think I made things awkward there.

No, it was probably me. Marianne pulls a face. It’s not like I’d warned you I was coming. It was all a bit impulsive of me and I was just thinking it would serve me right to be run off by a possessive girlfriend or something.

No, he says quickly, ah no, nothing like that. 

You didn’t say in your emails, but I wasn’t sure if, you know…

No, no one. I mean, a few drunken things like, but nothing serious. He looks at her. And you?

No one at all. It’s been– she closes her eyes and when she opens them again her smile is beatific, – really nice, actually.

Oh yeah, a regular saint now are you?

You should see me in London, I’m like an old granny. I come in from work and have my tea and water my plants and I’m in bed with my book by 9pm.

You still liking it there then?

She nods. It’s okay, I like the gallery a lot

Marianne had moved to London in the year after graduating from Trinity for a poorly paid internship at a well-known fine art gallery somewhere in the centre of town. She has to get the tube early in the morning to arrive at work in time to take in deliveries. Sometimes she sends photos to Connell of the pieces as she unwraps them. He likes the contrast of the colours and brush strokes against the mundane ephemera of packaging, the paintings emerging riotously from the parcel paper and brown tape and bubble wrap.

While Marianne collects her bag, Connell goes to thank the host and say goodbye to Cara, and he stops to sign a few more books for the shop to have in their display.

Cara perches on the table next to him scrolling through her phone. Do you want to share an Uber?

He shakes his head, We’ll get the subway. He knows that Cara is watching him.

She’s gorgeous, your friend.

Connell doesn't know how to respond to that so he says, Mm, and asks how many books he should sign.

Ten? How long have you known each other?

Since school. A long time.

And she flew all this way…?

Connell counts up the spines and, relieved, realises he has made it to ten already. He slides the pile over to her with a look. 

That’s your lot, Cara. He gets to his feet. Thank you for this evening. I genuinely hated every minute.

She laughs. I’ll book in another for next week then.

He takes his jacket off the back of the chair and looks around for Marianne. 

She is back at her position by the door, her coat on and her bag at her feet. He expects to find her impatient or perhaps mildly amused by the sight of him doing something so horrendously self-promotional as signing his own books, but her expression is neither of those things. 

She is holding her features very taut, almost strained against the delicate bones of her face. He is reminded instantly of an animal scenting the wind, although he cannot decide whether she is predator or prey. When their eyes meet, he feels it physically, a tangible pressure on his skin. He puts the pen that he had borrowed very carefully back on the table and pushes in the chair.

I’m off now, he says to Cara without looking at her.

Marianne watches as he walks towards her, retrieves the backpack from her feet and shoulders it. It feels daring, obscene almost, to be looked at that way in the company of other people.

I booked a hotel, she says her eyes on his, I wasn’t sure–

Come to mine, he says and she nods and they turn in unison without another word and step out of the bookstore into the sharp cold of the street outside.

\---


	2. Chapter 2

They sit next to each other on the subway, in a silence that would be comfortable if Connell’s heart didn’t feel as though it was about to beat its way out of his chest. He is hyper-aware of Marianne beside him, the light brush of their jackets, the soft pressure of her leg against his. He is sure he can feel her breaths, the shallow rise and fall of her chest, the sound of air as it rises through her throat and hisses out, hot and quick, through her parted lips.

Her backpack is on his lap and he hugs it closer to him, propping his chin on its top. A stop before his stop, Marianne leans over and rests her head on his shoulder. And, despite the din of the carriages and the noise of the other passengers, everything suddenly feels very quiet and still.

They get off at Morningside Heights and he leads her up to his tiny fifth floor studio apartment, the rent of which has already eaten away most of his book advance. Marianne asks if she can take a shower. He gets her a clean towel and shows her the exact position the tap has to be in to ensure the water won’t scald or freeze her. When the bathroom door closes behind her, he sits on the edge of his bed and then gets up, then sits down again almost at once.

They will have sex. He is almost sure of that, and yet the logistics of it are wrecking his head. Marianne will shower and then he will shower, should, definitely, given that the nerves from the book-reading caused him to sweat through the thin cotton of his shirt. But then, by the time he has finished, a jet lagged and weary Marianne will have lain on his sheets and fallen asleep, still damp from the shower and he knows he will find it unbearable to wake her and so he will have to ease himself next to her on the mattress and lie still and wide-eyed with skin so tight he will feel it might burst.

He is still imagining this frustrated, sleepless version of himself when he notices that he is on his feet again and, dreamlike, in front of the bathroom door, his fist raised to the white wood. He hadn’t really meant to do that but, before he can second guess it, he has knocked and Marianne is calling for him to come in and he is pushing open the door to a room filled with steam. 

He can make out Marianne only dimly, her limbs shining pale and strangely disembodied through the haze. He closes the door very quietly behind him and stands there uncertainly until she says, well are you going you get in then, or what? And her eyes are teasing but her mouth is soft and blurred.

He feels clumsy and slow as he undresses, as though the steam has permeated his mind. His fingers fumble at his buttons and he trips over Marianne’s boots when he makes his way across the room. He steps into the bath and squints his eyes against the spray. Features begin to appear to him, her eyes, her cheekbones, a slice of ear. Her face has been washed clean of make up, and the sight of it makes Connell feel intensely, almost painfully, tender towards her. He cradles the back of her head in the palm of his hand and brings his mouth to hers.

Oh Connell, she says.

Wherever he touches her she is wet and yielding, as though she has been saturated by the shower. He imagines his fingers leaving imprints in the soft sodden flesh of her upper arms, on the swell of her breasts, between her lips, between her legs.

When the water runs cold he takes her hand and leads her to his bed. They do not pick up towels, the wet soles of their feet inking footprints across the cheap linoleum. He presses her gently back onto his sheets and she lays her head on his pillow, her wet hair fanning out, the damp spreading from it like a halo. Her mouth is very pink and Connell feels a trembling in his limbs that has nothing to do with the cold.

Do you still want– His voice comes out thick. Do you still like orders and that, Marianne?

He sees her throat move as she swallows. Yeah.

It comes back to him easily, the ways to gratify and please her, that knowledge that he had once thought of as telepathy. He is knelt at the end of the bed and he lifts her foot gently to kiss the soft skin of her instep. She shuts her eyes and shivers.

You’re going to lie there now and not move, he says tenderly, aren't you? He works his mouth along the pale curve of her calf, then knee, then thigh.

Hold still for me, he says as her hips begin to arch, hold still.

-

Connell blinks his eyes open to the sound of Marianne knocking over his chair.

He stretches. Do you want to make a bit more noise there, Marianne?

Across the room she winces, smiles. Sorry.

He yawns and reaches down the side of his bed for his phone. It’s just gone seven, watery light already filtering in through the gap in his curtains.

I was going to get us a coffee. Marianne’s tugging on her boots. Do you want one?

He nods and flips onto his back. There’s three messages from Cara displayed on his homescreen: I’ve booked two more for next week. Don’t hate me. You were great.

There’s a place at the end of the block, he says to Marianne, do you want me to come?

No, she smiles, I’m sure I can make it to the end of the block. And she emphasises the last bit so that he knows she’s teasing him for saying something so terribly American.

When she’s gone he shuts off his phone without replying to Cara, rolls over onto his front again and buries his face in his pillow.

Last night he told Marianne that he was coming home.

They were lying face to face on the bed, their legs tangled together, the sweat cooling on their skin.

To Carricklea? she asked.

No, not Carricklea.

Dublin?

He grimaced and rubbed his neck, Maybe. Trinity have said they’ll have me teach, if I want to. But Ireland, in one way or another. Once all this promo stuff with the book is over, I’m heading home.

Don’t you like New York?

He did, he thought, some of it. He liked the anonymity of the city and its enormous libraries and its surprising parks, but he missed Lorraine, and the weather, and the sea in a way that sometimes knocked him breathless.

Sure, they’ve got enough starving artists in New York, he said, they could use a few more back home.

She rolled her eyes. You’d hardly be starving, Connell.

Oh I don’t know about that. One book, Marianne, I’m not raking it in.

They were quiet for a moment, then: There’s an opening in a gallery in Dublin, Marianne said slowly, Joanna sent me the application. It looks good. I’ve been weighing up my options.

Connell felt the breath catch in his throat. Right.

I like London, she bit her lip, but I think I like Dublin more. I’ve been looking for a reason to pack it in and go back really.

She was watching Connell closely. He noticed how dark her eyes were, a rich, sinking brown. He’d forgotten that. Somewhere deep within his chest, hope was carving a steady, burning path between his ribs. He felt cracked open by the intensity of it; it made him turn his face away from hers and stare up at the ceiling. 

He took a deep breath. Would you not wait for me? It came out of him in a rush, almost involuntarily, like a cough. Go to Dublin, take the job, wait for me. 

Beside him, he felt Marianne go very still.

I know we said when we left that we wouldn’t ask that of each other, he said quickly to the peeling plaster of his ceiling, Because we didn’t know and– But if we know now, like? If I’m coming home and you’re coming home… It’s been two years, Marianne. He laughed a little breathlessly, More. And I’ve only thought of you.

He lifted a hand to his chest. It was as though he was in the midst of a panic attack, he thought with distant interest, the same tight lungs, the pounding heart, but instead of air heaving its way out of his mouth, it was words.

When I graduated, when the book got picked up, last night. The first person I wanted to tell was you. The only person I wanted to see was you. It doesn’t seem right, does it? he said helplessly. To feel this way about one person and then not see them and go off and be with someone else. That would be mad, don’t you think?

Yes, Marianne said quietly into the dark beside him, I suppose.

And New York's been amazing, he continued quickly. Obviously. It's changed my life. But I think I’ve got what I want from it now. I want to take that back to Ireland and see how it works there. I don’t know, does that sound stupid?

No, I–

Or ungrateful? I don’t mean to be ungrateful. I’m so glad I came here, and that you pushed me to come. But actually even if you hadn’t flown over and I hadn’t seen you tonight, I would have wanted to come home anyway. I’d already decided that.

Marianne started to speak but Connell found he was unable to stop.

I’m not saying I’ll be in Ireland forever like, but for now, that’s where I want to be. And I’m just trying to be plain with you here now, if I’m back in Dublin and there’s a chance you’ll be in Dublin, I’ll want to see you. I’ll want to be with you, Marianne. I don’t want us to spend two months dancing round one another, miscommunication and misunderstanding and all that, like we usually do. Would that be okay with you? 

I mean maybe, he carried on without letting her answer, maybe I’m being presumptuous, but I thought all the calls and the emails since I’ve been gone and you flying over to see me tonight, and well, he swallowed, the sex just now, I thought that was a good sign that maybe you feel the same way I do. And even if I’ve got that wrong, I’d still want to say it, I think, I’d still want to be plain – to be absolutely clear with you – that I still love you and I’m still sick with missing you and if there’s a chance for us to be in Dublin together and try and make things work I’d want that more than anything. So that, he finished rather lamely, that’s how I feel about it.

He stared forcibly at the plaster above his head. Sometimes, when his upstairs neighbours walked about, it shed like snowflakes onto his bedding. He thought it might be shedding now. His eyes felt very gritty. Beside him, Marianne shifted onto her back and he wondered if the ceiling was falling on her too. 

Okay, she said at last, let’s do it.

Externally Connell held himself completely still, he concentrated very hard on that, on breathing slowly and steadily and not moving a muscle. Inside he felt the crack in his chest burst into a ravine.

Yeah? he said.

Yeah, she said and he could hear from her voice that she was smiling but the words came out thick like maybe she was crying also. I feel like that too, I want that too. 

Really, Marianne, he said, really?

Yes.

He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her over so that she was pressed into his side. Her cheek was soft and faintly wet against his chest.

Really? he said, one more time, just to be sure.

I’d have said it earlier, you know, she said. I’d have said yes the moment you said ‘Go to Dublin’ only you just kept talking. I’ve never heard you say so much in one go, Connell, she was laughing then. It was wonderful.

When Marianne returns with the coffees twenty minutes later, Connell is showered and dressed and sat at his desk. He is working through a short story that he realises now is about Marianne, although he hadn’t noticed that until this morning. He turns to watch her push the door open with her hip, a drink in each hand, a mist of raindrops in her hair. He will put that in the story, he thinks, not the raindrops but the pure, uncomplicated joy he feels watching the door open and knowing that she is the person behind it. 

She sets his coffee on the desk next to him and sits on the edge of his bed with her own. His apartment is so small that when he turns in his chair to face her he has to put his legs either side of hers so that they both fit. 

Marianne is warming her hands on her cup. Without looking at him, she says, so, and then she says, I've been thinking about what we talked about last night. 

He looks at her, suddenly watchful.

It’s just, Marianne says meeting his eye, I want you to be absolutely sure that’s what you want. Things are only just getting started for you out here. It would kill me if you missed out on some opportunity because, I don’t know, you felt you should come back for me.

It’s not that, he says at once, I told you, I’d already decided. You coming home too is just a nice - a very nice - bonus. 

And what if you meet someone else while you're here?

I don’t think I will. I’ve not had much luck in that respect, he says, to be honest with you.

She shoots him a look. Oh so it’s for lack of better options, is it?

He tugs at her arms and pulls her into his lap, laughing, trying not to spill her coffee. I knew you’d say that, he says. I think I’ve been sabotaging myself. I kept talking about you, about my best friend back home, the smartest girl I know.

She looks at him pleased, like he knew she would. He buries his face in her neck.

What if you suddenly decide you do want to stay in New York? she says softly.

I won’t.

What if I don’t get that job in Dublin?

You will.

Where will we live?

Stop, he says. Saying that we’ll do it, that’s the difficult part. Everything else, we’ll figure out. We’ll be okay, Marianne.

He feels her relent a little in his lap, she leans into him.

Saying what we want and acting upon it, she says after a while, it’ll be quite the novel experience for us.

Sure, it sounds pretty simple, Connell replied, when you put it like that.

\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading and for those that have kudos-ed and commented. Thanks for indulging my need to give Connell and Marianne a little more chance at happiness ❤️


End file.
